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TechnoratiRevoke EPA's Licenses to Pollute
The next president ought to turn his attention to the Environmental Protection Agency right away because President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made EPA into a pollution protection agency.
From the moment of its inception, in December 1970, EPA was caught in a trap. The agency copied its predecessors -- the giant Departments of Agriculture; Interior; and Health, Education and Welfare.
EPA relied too heavily on "end-of-the pipe" pollution controls that failed to eliminate toxins from our neighborhoods, workplaces and bodies. This meant that EPA granted factories and farms a daily quota of pollution -- and by extension, if we're being honest -- gave permits to harm or kill a predetermined number of Americans.
Despite the defects of such "regulation," we have made some progress. Rivers no longer burst into flames and the air is less visibly polluted.
Behind the veil of "clean skies," however, smog and soot and very small toxic particulate matter are still pouring out of the pipes of cars, trucks, the containerized shipping industry that drives global commerce, airplanes, incinerators, large farms and factories. These microscopic particles cause inflammation and injury to the lungs and the blood, killing thousands and condemning many more to life with asthma. Runoff from agribusiness, industry and suburban trophy lawns still flows through our (non-burning) rivers, creating dead zones off our shores and sickening swimmers on our beaches.
This is happening because industries have become experts at delaying and manipulating the work of EPA through political pressure and legal tactics. And EPA analysts cut and paste corporate-generated studies and analysis into their findings. As a result, the EPA often acts as if it were protecting the earnings of regulated industries rather than the public's health.
In 1982, for example, I came across information on toxaphene, an insect poison that had replaced DDT. American farmers, especially those cultivating cotton in the South, sprayed about 200 million pounds of this cancer-causing insecticide every year.
The data on toxaphene stunned me. Toxaphene created its own fallout. Wherever farmers sprayed it, most of the chlorine-like chemical would become airborne. Toxaphene was floating 1,000 miles north from the fields of Alabama and Louisiana to drop into the Great Lakes.
I could not ignore this evidence. I knew that the bosses of the pesticide division in Reagan's EPA had the damning evidence and did nothing. Given the gravity of the environmental threat, I informed Rep. Sidney Yates. Yates, the chairman of the Interior Subcommittee in the Appropriations Committee, was a Democrat representing Chicago and, therefore, Lake Michigan. His wife also happened to be in the hospital at the time, undergoing treatment for cancer. Yates acted fast. On July 23, 1982, he announced he would introduce legislation to ban toxaphene. He kept his promise and EPA had to ban the insecticide.
It should not take whistle-blowing or congressional intervention to eliminate toxic substances, especially those causing cancer. EPA should adopt a pollution prevention approach that focuses on phasing out carcinogens and polluting technologies.
An early opportunity for the agency in this field is to phase out dry cleaning that uses perchloroethylene, a toxic solvent. California has already adopted a phase-out of perc, citing nontoxic alternative technologies such as commercial wet cleaning.
Mandates to eliminate pollution rather than limit emissions can save lives. This approach can also help transform moribund industries through the application of green chemistry and closed-loop manufacturing. In the case of farming, sustainable agriculture would give us wholesome food while revitalizing rural America.
I hope that the next administration will have the common sense -- and vision -- to breathe new energy into an agency that has yet to live up to its founding promise.
E. G. Vallianatos, a former EPA analyst, is the author of "This Land is Their Land" and "The Passion of the Greeks." Contributing to this column was Mark Vallianatos, managing director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College and the co-author of "The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for A Livable City."
©1996-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
17 Comments so far
Show AllSiouxrose - The jury should be citizens not involved for or against the case - disinterested parties only. No scientist except by random chance - and ONLY if they have no ax to grind.
I know the argument that you need scientists or ethicists or something on the jury to understand the scientific information. Not really. Any discharge that raises issues so complicated that the regular folks are unable to understand it is the prime candidate for denial of permit on the grounds that doing things to find out how big of a disaster you produce is insane.
Insanity is our current national policy on pollution.
SHAKKER: I'd like the standards you mention above to also apply to the biogenetic alteration of our foods. The jury could have 3-4 scientists, preferably those not profiting from any firm that trafficks in biotech; and the rest could be the people at the end of the Dr. Frankenstein food chain. Europe managed to ban or hold back plenty of GMO products because in Europe there IS a standard of eating, and it's not about huge beefy steaks and fries. Nor is obesity the problem there that it is here.
No discharge should be allowed unless it is reasonable to conclude it is safe. The need to calculate harm is the wrong standard. If necessary, these cases should go to a jury of citizens in a regular court case. If facts change the permit should be withdrawn. The permit should be for a short duration and open to reasonable challenges.
Juries do screw up, but I like them better than corporations, politicians and bureaucrats that are bought and sold as efficiently as the stock market trades stock.
SiouxRose
TY-Conscience IT WAS!!!!!!!!
How long before we figure out that we are ALL in this together?
Good story about Rep. Yates.
We all are like that. The justice system is corrupt, unfair, and counterproductive. Too many innocent people in prison? Not a big deal.
Not until it happens to MY son or daughter or niece or friend or...
EZE: I don't have the birth chart data of too many contenders. And as to the likelihood of ours becoming a kinder, gentler nation... I do see strides in that direction next year, largely due to Jupiter/Mars starting 2009 in the altruistic sign of Aquarius, the sign that does champion the power of unique coalitions.
Saturn, the judgment planet (it has a powerful resonance with the premises of the Old Testament, as well as the Law of karma) enters Libra, the sign of the balance scales. It is in this sign that LAW is championed. That would be a good thing, if Pluto (entrenched powers capable of using dark, Machiavellian strategies) was not poised to challenge Saturn. The aspect is the hardest in astrology, known as the square (two planets projecting their mandates at right angles or cross-purposes) and begins in late October 2009 and works deeply into 2010. I believe it speaks of MAJOR resource limitations, and is one of the celestial factors that was also underway during the onset of The Great Depression.
My father left me a small sum and for the first time in my life I might have a little nest egg, so I have spoken to brokers and bankers and tried to get "educated," but every "expert" has a different opinion. Of course being better educated than they are in what's REALLY happening with oil prices, US banking/hedge funds/deficit, global warming, added to the astrological implications there does not seem to be any safe type of investment these days. On the plus side, I lived on almost nothing for the past decade, so got a jump start!
ezeflyer -- That has to be the best idea I've heard in a good long time. Why hasn't Nader been tapped for EPA chief before? I don't mean by the fascists, of course, but surely a Dem like Carter could've made the connection? Time to write Obama and make the pitch. I'll get right on it. GREAT IDEA!!
200 million pounds... you'd think that was a lot of pesticide? But that is just one of many.
So over that thousand miles the pesticide remained airborn... and all the hundreds of millions of pounds of pesticides ...
that couldn't be weakening the bees... nah.
Seems like a lot don't it? I mean to have no effect when deposited in such huge yearly doses.
Pesticide laced genetically modified pollen?
To Bee or not to Be? You'd think that wasn't even a question but it is the question. If the bees can't make it do you think we will?
A ring could be laid of one hundred pound sacks of pesticide around the world of all the insecticides applied to the Earth each year.
Our Earth's flea collar?
Asked one of the fleas.
Any predictions for V.P. Siouxrose?
Will an Obama administration use his inherited power of a unitary exec. to clean house of conservatives and get liberals and progressives in govt.?
The oligarchy will fight him tooth and nail so he can't get anything done. Who will win?
Will we get direct democracy? What do the stars say?
EZE: That's better casting than seen in much of the Hollywood big screen! (Next full moon, August 16 eclipse is in your sign. Watch electricity and live outlets, although a lot of "electricity" could operate symbolically to create some "aha" moments, if not a genuine epiphany.)
ZERO POINT FIELD: Conscious is to think, to be aware, while conscience represents one's moral compass. I'm presuming that concious was your relating to the former?
Follow the not-so cosmic dots: These industries are given a free pass. Studies are seldom funded, but those that do exist often establish a link between heavy chemicals flagrantly used and rising cancer rates; but the industries and their sacred call to profit are protected, while a good many citizens being impacted by these toxins are NOT medically covered.
It's the big-pharma equivalent of what Naomi Klein defined as "Disaster capitalism." Many diseases ARE being created to BE managed, and the fiscal equivalent is tantamount to charging someone "rent" to remain IN their body. Note the use of corn syrup to fatten up the nation, and how Diabetes rates have risen.
I've always maintained that the climate of pouring Goddess knows how many tons of poisonous chemicals into our air, soil and rivers on a DAILY basis would create a climate of impunity. How can ONE trespasser be discerned from the entire community? Their offenses work as a legal defense given the problems associated with burden of proof. Reminds me of Monsanto snaking out of its obligation to pay for medical treatment to the thousands (millions?) disfigured by exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. Maybe the karma will return to US via all the shrimp we're now importing from the craters our own bombs recently formed.
Nader for EPA Chief.
There was a reason why the Todd-Whitman resigned as the chief of the EPA.
Despite being a republican, her concious could not let her make the concessions that Bush the Turd and Chainyou were trying to give to buisnesses.
And don't forget about chemtrails
When the corporations gave themselves citizenship (Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad) they gave themselves the unlimited power to bribe our elected officials. Until that constitutional error is repaired we finite flesh and blood humans have no hope of standing up to these undying omnipotent Corporations. Only after that basic flaw is fixed can we stop pointlessly playing Whack-A-Mole with one malfunctioning agency after another.